This was a fantastic partnership and a brilliant way to join up social media and TV. Being able to ‘tweet’ to my mates via FB certainly improved my inauguration viewing experience!

And this could’ve been a good sponsorship from Vestas, but I’ll have negative correllations with them because of the pre-roll. The video stream was a bit borked but I had already seen the pre-roll once when I loaded the video the first time- why did I have to see it again if I reloaded the screen? Very annoying!

Quick summary:

1. There were 200,000+ status updates through the Facebook integration on CNN.com

2. At that time, 3,000 people commented on the FB CNN feed per minute

3. Obama’s FB Fan Page has more than 4 million fans & in excess of 500,000 wall posts

As of 4:45 pm (GMT), CNN had served 13.9 million live video streams globally since 6am and had broken its all time total daily streaming record (from Nov 5, 2008) of 5.3 million live streams. (via Mashable)

In another one of my ‘advertising is so full-on in North America‘ posts, I need to share my gall at the seductive pharmaceutical adverts that all over TV over here. I’ve gotten really addicted to the Hills (again, don’t judge – everyone has a little bit of trash that they like), which is watched by 13-34 year old women (and gay men – hello, Eugene Levy’s son? Just saying.) Every single ad break has Neutrogena, film, make-up and birth control commercials. Having lived in the UK for the past six years, I’ve gotten used to a certain level of advertising and things are completely different over here.

I can’t get over the fact that pharmaceutical adverts are allowed on TV over here. It creates a cheerleading element around certain illnesses and because the creative agencies do their job so well, you get seduced into wanting whatever is being advertised.

Take this commercial for Yasmin, a birth control.

It has all of the sharing, talking and gossiping that women do. Basically, they’ve got the female camaraderie element bang on and Yasmin will probably see an uplift in requests from doctors & patients. Is it responsible? Well, that’s another question.

Then there’s this advert for Cialis, the Viagra competitor. It’s an incredibly seductive piece that I imagine would work extremely well with the target audience – it’s basically an uplifting lifestyle ad with an erection medication message weaved in.

In the UK, direct to consumer prescription drug adverts are banned but disease awareness campaigns have just been allowed. Watch out for ads like this, which was a UK advertising first. Get ready to be seduced.